Using your widget's online/offline status

With your widget's online and offline statuses, you can control how your visitors interact with you through Tidio. Being online can serve as an invitation to start a chat, and affects how different aspects of Tidio work for your business - including how you're notified about messages. When you're offline, on the other hand, you can focus more on responding via email or automating certain things. On top of that, you get the option to use the Operating Hours schedule - which lets you change your status automatically.

In this article, you'll learn:

• How to change your status
• The differences between the online and offline widget
• How notifications work
• How the Operating Hours schedule works
• How Flows and Lyro can behave based on widget status

Changing your status

Each agent in a Tidio project controls their own status, individually. When all agents are offline, your Tidio widget's status becomes offline as well; and if at least one agent goes online, the widget goes online, too. 

An agent can only control their own status, and they can only do that when they're logged into Tidio. If an agent is logged out of Tidio, their status goes offline. You can change your own status in the bottom-left corner of your Tidio panel. Click on your avatar there, and you will see the Show online status option:

If there are any other agents currently online in your project, you will see them listed under Online agents below:

Clicking on View all agents takes you to the Settings > Team section, where you can see all your agents (including the offline ones) along with their current status, roles, and other details:

💡

Note: If you are the Project Owner, you can change other agents' statuses (as long as they are logged into Tidio). To manage your team's individual statuses, click on the three-dots menu on the far right of a listed agent:

 

 

 

If the agent is logged in, this will allow you to change their status to offline (or online):

 

When you switch your own status to offline, you will also see a bit of information about your current widget status:

This information can differ, based on your Tidio settings. For example, if you've configured Tidio to disappear whenever offline (we will cover these settings further in the article), the information will reflect that:

To change your status in the mobile app, go to Settings section and use the Offline toggle:

Online and offline - the basic differences

Being online or offline affects what your Tidio widget looks like on your website. However, it also affects how the widget behaves when a visitor decides to message you, which - in turn - affects how (and when) you're notified. Flows can also work differently depending on your status, and so can Lyro (the AI agent). Let's go over these main differences below:

• Widget appearance (status text)
• The Pre-Chat Survey, Offline Message, and ticket submission
• Widget visibility options

Please note that one of the key differences is how notifications work when you're online or offline; we cover this in a separate section of the article.

Widget appearance (status text)

Most aspects of your widget appearance can be managed via Settings > Live Chat > Appearance. Inside, you will find the Content section:

In the Content section, there are several tabs with different settings. To change the texts of your online status and offline status, go to the Home tab and scroll down:

This status text appears in your widget's Home screen and changes based on your current widget status. Feel free to use the Preview options on the right to see what the widget looks like in different situations.

Please note: if you want to change any of the other texts that are visible, scroll back up in the Home tab and see the Header and Message fields available to modify:

Furthermore, if you're looking for the "Chat with us" text, it's available in a different place - namely the Settings > Live Chat > Translations section:

Inside the language pack you're using (e.g. English), search for the Status field, and modify it any way you like:

Please note that these other texts do not change when your status changes; the only texts affected by your status are the Online status and Offline status texts, mentioned earlier.

The Pre-Chat Survey, Offline Message, and ticket submission

An crucial part of your visitors' experience is what happens when they actually try to message you through the widget - and this experience differs depending on your status.

The Pre-Chat Survey

The Pre-Chat Survey, if enabled in the Content > Pre-Chat Survey tab, is a form that pops up for any visitor who tries to message you for the first time. It is mandatory to complete, and it appears regardless of your status.

The Offline Message form

However, when you're offline, there's an additional form that pops up: the Offline Message form. This cannot be disabled, and it always asks the visitor for their email address, so that you have a way to reach out to them later.

If the Pre-Chat Survey is enabled, it is going to appear first, followed by the Offline Message. Of course, of the Pre-Chat Survey has been set up to ask for an email address, the Offline Message simply takes that information right away and doesn't ask again.

You can modify the Offline Message text itself inside the Content > Chat tab:

Once the visitor provides all the required information, their message is sent through the chat widget, and the appropriate notifications can be triggered. When an agent is online, they will normally received a live sound/popup notification from Tidio immediately, allowing them to react; if the widget is offline, only delayed email notifications are possible (we cover the different notification options later in the article).

Submitting a ticket

One more relevant option is allowing your visitors to just submit a ticket directly through the chat widget, which is only possible if you're offline. You can see the option labelled Let visitors create ticket when offline in the Content > Chat tab:

With this enabled, the Pre-Chat Survey and Offline Message form do not apply the same way. Instead of being able to keep using the chat widget and leave more chat messages, the visitor will only be able to submit their email address and one message through the ticket submission form, and your agents will receive it as a ticket in Tidio. This can be a practical solution if you wish to limit the amount of chat messages you receive while offline, and if you prefer to respond to tickets inside Tidio. 

Please see this extensive guide on ticketing in Tidio to learn more.

Widget visibility options

Apart from the different interactions your online/offline widget allows, you also get the option to entirely hide the widget whenever it goes offline. This is useful when you prefer to avoid any incoming chat communication when you're not available.

Find this option in the Advanced section of your Appearance settings:

Inside, you can see the setting labelled Display widget when agents are offline - which is enabled by default. That means your Tidio widget will normally remain visible when all your agents are offline. If you prefer to hide Tidio during your offline times, disable that option:

Receiving notifications

Depending what your status in Tidio is, you are able to receive different kinds of notifications in general. When you're online in your Tidio project, you can receive live sound (and popup) notifications, immediately when a new message arrives. If you're offline, you won't get these notifications any longer.

However, if all the agents are offline (which means your Tidio widget is offline as well), then it's possible to receive email notifications.

Each agent needs to manage their own notifications in Settings > Notifications:

Inside, you will find all the available notification types, along with a selection of different sounds for each.

The Web notification column allows you to enable or disable live notifications (which work when you're online), while the Email column allows you to enable or disable email notifications (which work when you're offline):

If your Tidio widget is offline, you can only receive email notifications. The email notification will be sent to your mailbox five minutes after the message is received in Tidio, provided that your widget has remained offline and that nobody has taken over the incoming chat. The notification email includes basic visitor data and their chat message to you; you can by simply responding to that email notification or logging into your Tidio project and answering from there.

The mailbox used for this notification is the agent's registered Tidio email (which the agent uses as their login). However, if you prefer to send all your email notifications to a different mailbox (or several mailboxes), you can do that by enabling the Forward email notifications option at the bottom of your Notifications settings:

This way, any incoming offline email notifications will be sent to those mailboxes. If an agent doesn't want to receive these notifications in their individual mailbox (their Tidio login address), they should disable the corresponding Email option in their Notifications settings.

You can learn more about how notifications work in this dedicated guide.

We also have a separate guide specifically about offline email notifications.

The Operating Hours schedule

While each agent normally manages their status manually, it is possible to use the Operating Hours schedule - which changes an agent's status automatically, based on the days and hours they set up for themselves.

You can adjust your schedule by going to Settings > Operating Hours:

The Operating Hours schedule works based on each agent's current selected location. Please ensure that each team member has set up the correct time zone at the bottom:

To set up the hours when you wish to be online, move the white circles - selecting a span of online time for each day individually:

You can delete an entire period of time and set up your account to be displayed as offline for the whole day - hover the mouse over the blue line and click on the trash icon:

You can add a new timeframe again by clicking the plus (+) button:

You can also create multiple spans of online time for each day, e.g. to accommodate lunch breaks or other regular away times:

In addition to managing your own schedule, it is also possible to manage other agents' schedules (as long as you are the owner of the project). This is useful when you need to ensure specific operating times for the entire team, or if you want to check if an agent's settings are correct.

As the owner, you can check (and modify) the Operating Hours for each agent by selecting their names from the dropdown menu on the right:

Please note: your individual Operating Hours schedule can only work if you are logged into Tidio. If you're entirely logged out, your status cannot be forced to become online!

Flow and Lyro behavior dependent on widget status

The status of your widget doesn't only affect how chatting and notifications work - you can also configure Flows and your Lyro AI agent to behave differently, basing on your widget status.

Flows - the 'Chat Status' condition

In your Flow setup, you have the option to use various conditions, and one of them is the Chat Status condition. Adding that into your flow allows you to create different flow behaviors based on your current widget status.

See this guide for more details on this condition.

Lyro - response and handoff settings

If you're using Lyro, in your Lyro AI Agent > Configure section you can decide whether Lyro responds at all times - or only when you're offline. You can manage that specific setting in the General tab:

In addition to that, Lyro can take different actions during handoff situations. You can decide if Lyro should transfer a live chat to agents, keep the chat, or create a ticket; and these different settings are available for online and offline statuses separately. You can manage that in the Handoff tab:

To learn more about all the possible Lyro settings and details, see this extensive guide.